On A Sullen Ground: Year Two
by DagonSt
Summary: Slytherin!Harry AU, in snippets and drabbles. Plot happens; character death. Written pre-HPB.
1. Seeker

Draco gets a sinking feeling, watching Harry in the air. He asked Harry to come, because he wanted Harry to see him win the slot on the Slytherin Quidditch team. He's always planned to be Seeker; it's expected at home, and there's no good reason why he shouldn't be.

His try-out was a mere formality, because Flint wanted the Firebolts Lucius had agreed to provide for his son's team. But he wasn't noticeably worse than anyone else, so it went well.

Until Harry. Harry's always been wild on a broom - no-one ever taught him which maneuvers are likely to break his neck, so he just _does_ them. Draco spent more time dodging Harry and telling him off for it than really flying, last year. He didn't realize what it might mean for Quidditch - for _Seeker_. But looking at Flint's face now, he understands.

Flint is thinking that Draco Malfoy has an important father, and Firebolts are useful, and would not be an embarrassment to the team. But Harry Potter is a brilliant flier, a natural, and with a little training he might be the best player to come out of Hogwarts in generations. Draco won't concede that Harry is that good, but Flint will.

Harry catches the Snitch, swoops down like he was born to it.

_Look,_ Draco wants to say. _Let me go up again. I can do that just as well as Harry, who's after all hardly more than a Muggle and never saw a broomstick before last year._ But he doesn't have the nerve to fly like Harry does, and it makes him sick. Harry tries to catch his eye, but he won't look. He watches Flint watch the subsequent mediocre fliers.

Harry hovers nervously over Draco's shoulder. Draco wants to yell at him to go away - to kill him for ruining this. He still might, later. For the next five _years_ he's going to have to live, knowing that someone else is Seeker and he isn't. It's worse because he doesn't think Harry meant it. Harry Potter _could_ be a crack Seeker and not know it, because that's just how he is. Anyone else would fear Draco's plans for revenge, or what favors the Malfoys will withdraw. Since it's _Harry_, he's more likely worried that he's hurt Draco's feelings, and he'd be hovering even if Draco had no father and didn't know where he slept.

He ignores Harry until the team's getting up to leave, to debate their choice, which really isn't a choice at all. Draco stands up too, calls out for Flint. "There's something else to think about," he says, and his voice sounds so very calm and assured. He takes Harry's glasses; drops them; steps on them. It's the worst thing he's ever done to anyone who matters. Everyone looks at him. He bends and picks up the frames, puts them in Harry's hand. Harry hasn't made a sound, but looks awfully shocked. Draco smiles at him, but Harry probably can't see it.

"I'll take them to Snape for you, Harry," he offers later. Because of course he's going to be Slytherin's new Seeker now, and he can afford to be kind.


	2. Conversation

/_Several boys jockey for position at a window in a staircase landing, passing around a single pair of omniculars as they watch their rivals stumble through the first practice of the year. The Gryffindor team captain is well-known, and two more can be identified by their fiery red hair as Weasleys._/

"I've got the Seeker. Vicious prat, that Malfoy. Here, have a look."

"He'd make a passable Beater, if he weren't so puny."

"Not on my team, he wouldn't. That's two fouls in as many minutes."

"It's really a crime Potter isn't Seeker, you know. He was brilliant this summer."

"Not that we told him so, of course. 'Not bad, Potter.'"

"His broom isn't half bad either - a Firebolt."

"You've played against Potter?"

"Half the summer. He stayed with us."

"Harry Potter?" This is interesting enough for Wood to turn away from the window. Fred takes over the omniculars while George answers.

"Almost as quiet as our Ginny - crack Seeker, though. If he ever gets off the bench, we'd best hope he breaks something quick."

Fred grins, "Or Malfoy stays around - look at that!"

/_But he stays with you?_/

Oh no - he lives with his Muggle aunt and uncle. But Mum said we should write him, and he never wrote back. And Fred and George and Ron (they are my brothers) made so much fun of me for really writing, but then they took Dad's car to see what had happened. (I really think they were going to tell him off, but they wouldn't say.) And they'd (his aunt and uncle) put bars on his window, so the boys pulled them off brought him back here for the rest of summer.

/_Tell me about him._/

He's wonderful. I mean, I barely talked to him the whole time, but he didn't make fun of me like my brothers, and he said I can call him Harry. My brothers wouldn't, because they don't at school, and besides they're all Gryffindors. Harry's Slytherin, and Ron says he's friends with a bad lot. But Harry's perfectly fine, and Ron could stand to be better behaved himself. Harry even offered to do chores, and he'd never seen a magical house before, because he was raised by Muggles.

/_This Harry Potter is a Slytherin?_/

Yes. He has green eyes, so the colors look very well on him. I hope I sort into Gryffindor, but you just can't imagine how red and gold look when you've got red hair. (Neither can Mum, she knits Ron maroon sweaters for Christmas.) Ron and Harry both say the head of Slytherin is awful - he's the Potions teacher, and he has it in for Harry especially. Ron says he favors Draco Malfoy for no good reason (that's one of Harry's friends so he didn't say it in front of Harry.) I told you what Lucius Malfoy did in the bookstore, so I'm sure Ron's right and the Malfoys are perfectly evil.

/_That...would not surprise me in the least._/

Creevey, _a star-struck first year with camera at the ready, in a voice hushed and breathless_: - Weasley? Er, Ron? Did Harry Potter really stay with you all summer? (_a slight pause, followed by a rush of words_) I was passing in the stairwell and I heard, and... (_courage fails him, momentarily_)

Weasley, _profoundly bored_: Yeah. (_he notices the Muggle device_) And his friends will break that for you, if you go near them. He's really nothing special anyway.

"You stayed with the Weasleys all summer," Draco exclaims in horrified tones.

"Only half. And crashed their car into Snape's precious tree." Harry is taping up his glasses again, and smiles at the memory.

"They'll never be able to replace that," Draco sneers. "The Weasleys haven't got two Galleons to rub together. Wasn't it horrible?"

Harry slides his glasses back on. "I've never been in a proper wizarding house before. It was loads better than what Muggles have."

"But the _Weasleys_, Harry, they're hardly -"

"Hardly anything like the Dursleys." Harry's tone hardens, marking the end of the subject, and he stands up. "Besides, it's not like I had anything better to do."


	3. Ignorance

Harry wouldn't let Draco take his glasses, and that's really what started it. Draco stiffened slightly, and then walked away, and they didn't speak again for over a month. That was really what happened.

The reasons were all around the school within a day: that certain things had been arranged beforehand, and Malfoy couldn't stand not to get his way. That Potter wanted to follow his father as Seeker, and had been practicing in secret and all summer. That the both of them were spitting mad over Flint's compromise.

Draco was furious about it - loudly and obviously, as usual - so there's some truth in that. It only annoyed Harry, though. Flint appointed an entire backup team as an excuse to put him in Slytherin green, but he knew he'd never play in a real game. His glasses were fixed, and the rumor that he was all but blind had died down, and he had been getting tired of the not talking.

Crabbe and Goyle ignored him too, but Harry can hardly tell the difference with them. He found somewhere else to sit at meals, and the three of them reverted to their natural formations. Snape quickly reassigned the working partners in Potions, announcing Potter's name with a barely-concealed smirk. Reading out the steps one at a time while Longbottom added the ingredients usually got them a passing grade. The Gryffindor was a little afraid of him, and Harry ordered him about, but they managed better than anyone had expected.

Malfoy became more vicious by the week, though. He lashed out at everyone - Gryffindor, the mudbloods and Weasleys, Neville Longbottom. Harry wanted to apologize, but not until he knew whether he felt guilty because Draco insulted anyone who spoke to him, or because he was getting by better than Draco.

Flint got irritated at Malfoy too, because he'd rather knock Harry off his broom than look for the Snitch. He always knew as soon as Harry's seen it, so he wasn't as bad as he might have been. Harry learned to watch for creative fouls and broom-tampering, and Draco never once knocked his glasses off once they're in the air.

Harry was invited to the Gryffindor ghost's Deathday party. He thought Ginny Weasley had done it, but she wasn't there at all. Perhaps it had been Longbottom, then. They couldn't be friends, because he was a Slytherin and Longbottom a witless scatterbrain, and all they had in common was a hatred for the Potions Master. Harry looked in on the party because he had nothing better to do, and left as soon as he heard the voice that no-one else could.

It stopped in a corridor flooded in an inch of water, and Harry blinked at the size of the pool. It was not unusual, in the Slytherin dungeons, to find damp walls or even small puddles after it rained, but this was above-ground. When he looked up, he saw Draco Malfoy first, walking towards him down the hallway. Then he saw, and Draco a split-second later, what had been done there.

"Enemies of the Heir beware," Draco read in a hushed voice. The words looked very much like blood; Draco's hands were clean. "That's not much - Filch's cat is everyone's enemy," Harry noted. If Draco had done this, would anyone believe that Harry hadn't helped him? Malfoy must have been thinking along similar lines - they shared a glance, as the sound of footsteps drew nearer. Harry looked up at the writing again, and sighed. "It's lucky we were only on our way to Lockhart's book reading, don't you think?"

They did go to the reading, too. Snape, after standing there and visibly not believing a word they said, walked them there himself. When it was over they were marched back to Slytherin, and that night they sat up to talk about the Chamber, and the Heir, and Lockhart - and everything else that wasn't Quidditch.


	4. Snake Charmer

A sharp hand between his shoulder-blades helped him into the Slytherin common room. Harry landed hard on the stone floor, turning to squint up at the pale shape - Draco Malfoy - standing over him. Harry had been expecting something like this.

"Why didn't you say you were the Heir of Slytherin?" Draco was furious. And alone, which had to be on purpose. Keeping things quiet.

"Because I'm _not_," Harry replied crossly. He picked up his glasses before Draco could think to kick them away or step on them again.

"And you turned my snake right off Weasel!" Draco continued in an injured tone.

"You might have hurt him. His wand's damaged, and he shouldn't have been up there at all."

"Well, Potter, that _is_ the point of a duel - to fight, to hurt, and _not_ to be sabotaged by your own friend." Harry's excessive consideration for the other three houses was a sore point for Draco. Harry shrugged, standing up. In focus, Draco's face was frosted over with indignation and displeasure. Harry thought he might find it easier to recognize the superiority of House Slytherin if there weren't so many difficult people in it.

"And I'm _not_ the Heir, Draco. You know I haven't been doing those things."

"They'll all think you have." Draco sounded envious. For a time, Harry had been very afraid that Draco was the Heir. Now he wished he still thought so. Even more, he wished Draco had agreed that he hadn't done anything.

"It'd be safe enough for _you_. You've got a father on the Board of Governors, Professor Snape... If they think it's me, they'll break my wand and pack me off to Little Whinging."

That was the right thing to say. Draco's irritation at being upstaged gave way to his pride in being the famous Harry Potter's guide and patron in the wizarding world.

"You won't have to worry, Harry. Even if you are, Slytherin takes care of its own." The idea that Harry didn't want to be responsible for anything like that was completely beyond Draco, and he didn't like that at all. The idea of Slytherin rallying around someone who would was just a little worse. "Maybe just your being here triggered it. You said you heard voices in the walls -"

"Well, I haven't been talking back!" Harry exclaimed.

"Maybe you should try." Draco struck with the instinct of a viper, for a second something far older and more deadly than a petulant, drawling child.

_Heir of Malfoy_, Harry thought in shock, and then surprised himself again by grinning widely. It was a crackpot idea - the kind Harry usually had to come up with himself and drag Draco into kicking and screaming. Nothing good could come of it, and it could go wrong in three spectacular ways that he could think of on the spot. It was exactly what Harry needed right now, and Draco should never know how grateful he was.

"If you'll summon - "

"Of course. Father taught me," Draco returned the smile, radiating smugness.

"Dormitory, then," Harry said, already walking. "We can catch it in a pillowcase after, or can you un-summon them too?"

"We'll keep one about for you to train - the Professor won't mind."

If it were Draco's, he probably wouldn't. Harry very much doubted Snape would approve of the infamous Harry Potter honing his talent for snake-charming.


	5. ShapeChanger

Ginny doesn't quite hear or see Tom Riddle, now that she's drowned him - the book that is him. He's like words written in her head, though, and when he says to get the diary from Potter, she knows that's what she'll do. Except he's Harry to her. She's allowed to call him Harry.

It's easy to get the things she needs. The potion is in the false bottom in George's trunk, bottled up because the twins haven't thought of something fun to do with a third dose of Polyjuice. And because Malfoy's after Ron all the time, she attacks him as a sisterly gesture, and tries to pull his hair out by the roots. Ron drags her back, and Harry collars Draco, and no-one knows just what's gotten into Ginny. She isn't entirely Ginny when she does these things.

Someone's already jammed the lock on the Slytherin Quidditch supplies, so she doesn't even need Tom to show her how to open it in the dark. She takes the shortest uniform - a Seeker's - and likes the way green and silver look with her red hair.

Ginny doesn't feel as strange as she should, when the mirror shows her a pointy chin and pale eyes. She's gotten used to using Tom's voice, and Tom pulling her into the book to wear his skin. It's a selfish kind of sharing he does, giving his memories life as she relives them. Malfoy's body doesn't come with memories or feelings, only a few inches and different eyes.

Malfoy sweeps past the Slytherin common room, which has the same leather couches and high ceilings Ginny remembers from fifty years ago. There seems to be no-one Malfoy can't put off with a sneer, so she does and likes it.

The lock on Harry's chest, that's the first hard thing she's found. She breaks things before Tom tells her how to open it properly, so it remembers how to lock back again. Tom is in there, with a photo album and tattered grey cloak. She picks him up with a smile and lets the lid shut as she tucks the book away.

It was all so easy that it hasn't been nearly an hour, so she walks back out of the dungeons the way she came in. Harry's walking along the corridor where he isn't supposed to be, and she stops, blushing bright crimson. Ginny looks awful when she blushes, and she bets Malfoy does too. "You're just getting to practice, Draco? Flint's going to murder you." Ginny always just stares at him, but she isn't really Ginny at all, not face or eyes or mind. She steps closer to him, leans in a little like she's always wanted to do. They're just the same height, right now.

"_Malfoy?_"

"Harry," she starts, but her voice is Ginny's and Harry just looks shocked. So Ginny runs, mortified. She hides her boy's hands and girl's voice until she's all herself again, and burns the Quidditch uniform like Tom tells her to.


	6. Confusion

Everything Harry Potter owns is smashed or torn or thrown about the second-year Slytherin dormitory, and even Crabbe and Goyle know that there's hell to pay once Malfoy and Potter get back from Quidditch practice. They wait there, too late to guard anything, but eager for the fight certain to come.

Malfoy strolls in with Potter at his heels, and the door closes behind them with a click.

In the next instant, Potter slams Malfoy back against the door. Enough force to drive the air out of his lungs, but Potter's yelling /_what the hell did I do to you Malfoy?_/ too loudly to hear Malfoy's gasps. Crabbe and Goyle reluctantly take the initiative and haul him back, ripping his wand away. No call for magic: Potter is gifted, but small. He twitches in their grip like a Snitch, abortive feints, cursing them. Malfoy leans against the wall for a few breaths, hands on his knees.

"I didn't do it." He looks from Potter to the wreck and back, sidestepping the three to look more closely. He isn't naturally careful, but refrains from kicking or stepping on things.

Potter calls over his shoulder, straining to see what Malfoy is doing. "I _saw_ you, Malfoy. In the hall, leaving for Quidditch."

"You were in detention when I left for Quidditch. Someone's been _in_ here," Malfoy adds, unhappy.

"You tried to kiss me, too," Potter adds bluntly. "I wouldn't have said, if you'd owned up."

Malfoy looks at Potter. Crabbe and Goyle look at Malfoy. Everyone looks confused, and a little horrified. Except Potter, who's just patient, and jerks away to throttle Malfoy again.

Malfoy dodges, sputtering about Quidditch practices and how he bloody well did _not_ try to kiss anyone. Back towards the safety of his own perfectly neat cot, stopping short when he realizes that the snake might be loose too. Crabbe and Goyle have to intercede again.

"Look, Harry," Malfoy reasons once Potter's caught. "Your cloak is the only thing you have worth stealing, and that's still there. It's probably the Gryffindors again. Crabbe, Goyle, we'll have to sweep the room." The mysterious rash of pranks and and traps infesting Slytherin just prior to winter holidays was popularly attributed to Gryffindors unknown, but likely red-headed.

Crabbe and Goyle let Potter go again, and start from the door. Potter picks his wand off the ground, and looks at Malfoy, who meets his gaze without flinching. They don't find anything missing, or anything new.


	7. Into The Woods

After two weeks, Harry thinks he's been quite patient enough with the curfews and the restrictions and most of all with Draco. Draco's already asleep, sprawled across the bed and hard to wake as always. But Draco's been crowing for two weeks about his father sending Hagrid - 'that lunatic gamekeeper; Harry, you _know_ he was drunk' - to Azkaban, so he's coming to see Hagrid proved innocent.

The number of spiders in Hogwarts really doesn't bear thinking about, because they've been leaving for months and it's still easy to find lines of them crawling away. He gets Draco halfway across the lawn before Draco stops dead.

"What is it now?"

"Broomsticks." Draco's voice is decisive and - finally - awake.

"Huh? We're not practicing Quidditch, Malfoy. Stop stalling."

Draco's turning and tugging the cloak in the opposite direction anyway. "We're going in that forest again, _I_ want a way out, Potter. Broomsticks." So Harry waits a little longer while Draco breaks into the Slytherin Quidditch equipment locker.

The brooms are heavy as they walk through the forest, but they give him something to hold as he tries to talk civilly to the giant spider, Aragog. Draco's been scared into silence, clutching at Harry's arm so hard he's going to leave bruises again. Probably on purpose.

Maybe with reason, because as soon as Harry finds out what he wants, they're _prey_. Draco's off like a shot - straight up, trying to dodge spiders three times as large as a bludger, and Harry's right after him, trying to think of Quidditch.

Trees in the Forbidden Forest grow straight up for what seems like miles, tall and thin, impossible to see properly in the dark. The spiders can't jump as well, can't swarm, but up here they've got webs strong enough to catch birds. The Firebolts go through them like paper, but it's only luck that neither of them plow into a tree-trunk.

Finally Harry breaks above the canopy, coated in sticky cobwebs and leaves. Draco blasts a spider that somehow anticipated them, crouched to spring on one of the topmost branches, with a vicious sneer that lapses very quickly into white-faced exhaustion. "_Spiders_," he hisses, and he sounds just a little unhinged. "Spiders, Potter! Your imbecile giant tried to kill us again! I hope he _rots_ in Azkaban!"

"He's innocent, Draco," Harry replies, trying to wipe his glasses off. "Didn't you hear? Hagrid never opened the Chamber, it was someone else." But Draco's already off, zooming back towards the school.

Harry catches up with him in the bath - Draco's scrubbing at his face hard enough to turn it pink, but he spares a good long glare for Harry. They're antique baths, with feet and cracked porcelain. Harry turns on the tap for another, and looks around for a towel. "Hagrid's innocent."

Draco sneers, somewhere behind him. "You're taking the word of a huge spider." Draco hates being afraid, and Harry knows he was terrified back in the Forest. The only thing to do with him is wait until he lashes out. Hopefully in the morning. Hopefully at someone else.

"It did talk, after all." Harry walks back slowly with his towel and bathrobe, trying not to let his footsteps echo. "What great enemy do spiders that big have, do you think?"

He isn't watching carefully enough, so it's the easiest thing in the world for Draco to grab him as he passes, and push his head under the water. Harry screams and thrashes and - when Draco lets him up - leans against the tub while he catches his breath.

Draco is scowling, fingers clenched tight on the school tie Harry ought to have taken off already. "What have you been feeding Nag all term? It's _snakes_, Potter. Very large snakes." His voice drops to a venomous whisper. "If you get me involved in anything like that, Harry, I will smother you in your sleep. Understand?"

Harry nods just a little, dripping, eyes shut against the water. Snakes. Figures.

"Go clean yourself up, then. You're a wreck."


	8. The Opening

Ron keeps going over it, and he still can't think what he should have done differently. If he'd stayed in Gryffindor Tower, he would have been safe; but 'safe' doesn't seem to help his parents and his brothers. So he thinks that going after Harry Potter was a good idea. He'd thought Harry Potter was the Heir of Slytherin - because he was a Parselmouth and because of course Ginny with her funny schoolgirl crush would have followed him.

He got in one good punch, and was about to pick Potter up to do it again, when Potter said, "hang on, I was looking for you." He didn't sound nearly winded enough for someone who'd been punched in the stomach, but he wasn't trying to get up either. (Ron has brothers, he _knows_ what it's like.)

"Where's my sister!"

"In the Chamber - didn't they tell you?" Harry propped himself up and started sweeping the ground with his fingertips. "Always the glasses," he remarked. "Look, Weasley, they're sending Lockhart in. I think we should go too."

Ron remembers being edgy still, even though if Potter were here looking for him, he couldn't be down in the Chamber of Secrets torturing Ginny. "We? How do you _know_ all this?"

"I eavesdrop a lot," said Potter, unfazed.

"What happened to your pet Malfoy?"

Ron thought Harry wasn't going to answer at all, he was quiet for so long. "He's washing spiders out of his hair. And anyway, she's your sister."

"Spiders!" Ron hates spiders. He didn't think to ask about snakes then.

"There won't be any left down there. Look - you want to save Ginny. I want to find out who the Heir of Slytherin is. Do you trust Lockhart with it?" Potter wanted something more than just knowing even then. Maybe Ron should have asked more questions then and there - but he wanted to rescue Ginny.

If he had stopped to ask questions, or get his brothers too, they wouldn't have gotten to Lockhart in time. The fraud was all packed and _leaving_ when he and Potter burst in. Ron is blindingly furious at Lockhart, even if he is stuck in Mungo's. What good is a teacher if a second-year can push them around? What good is a Dark Arts teacher who can't bloody well notice Dark Arts being practiced right under their noses?

Lockhart is easy to be mad at. If he hadn't been an incompetent, blind idiot, he might have been able to do something. He might have been able to kill the basilisk. Or distract it - by getting eaten, for preference. But they didn't have someone competent: they had Lockhart, who wanted to _obliviate_ the both of them, so Ron doesn't see what he or Potter could have done differently.

Ron didn't trust letting Harry Potter - Slytherin and maybe the Heir after all - go on alone, but after Lockhart blocked the corridor, he didn't have much choice. So he knocked Lockhart out (the one thing he knows he did right) and started shifting rocks so he could get in.

He remembers hearing Potter coming back later at a dead run, but not being able to see him. "It's blind, it can't kill you now and it won't get through that but _keep_ it here, Weasley - I've got to get back in!"

The basilisk filled the passage behind where Harry seemed to be. It moved slowly, snout bumping the walls as it felt for its prey. Blind. Ron picked up a rock, because Harry was right - there was no way the snake could get through the opening he'd cleared, and his sister was still in there. Ron could have ignored the voice altogether, but then he thinks about the Heir of Slytherin walking out of the Chamber alone, and doesn't like that any better.

Ron hurled the stone, and moved back just in time, as the huge snake lunged into the corridor it already knew and the rockslide it couldn't see. And it stuck there - Ron could hear it thrashing on the other side, and see the jaws working and blood seeping down into the rocks. It took the teachers an hour to get it moved, afterwards.

"What a marvelous specimen of - what is that, do you think?" came the cheery voice behind him as Lockhart - none the worse for spells and rocks - tried to walk right up to it.

"A moron," Ron answered. "The pointy things are called fangs, and they kill you. Why don't you stand back here and throw rocks at it while I find someone to kill it?" Ron thinks if he had it to do again, he'd probably still warn Lockhart off the fangs. But if he hadn't, no-one would have blamed him.

From what Potter says, he didn't have much choice on his side either, because as soon as he got in, the Heir loosed a basilisk on him. Dumbledore believes him, and no-one can deny that there was a basilisk, so Ron can't blame Harry as much as he wants to.

Ron thinks Potter could have done a lot of things better, quicker, _sooner_, inside the Chamber. What he can't quite think is that Harry might have done it on purpose. The people who do didn't see him that night.


	9. The Chamber

The Chamber of Secrets. There was no reason they shouldn't have known that the monster was a snake, Salazar plastered it over an entire quarter of the school. He lined the Chamber with stone snakes too, and his own face - even Draco would say he had no sense of style.

Ginny Weasley lies still in an inch of water, tiny in this monument to egotism. She looks like a posed doll, knees together, hair pulled back, and the little book in the crook of her arm. Harry yells for her when he runs in, but she doesn't wake up.

The memory of Tom Riddle picks up Harry's wand, and can use it. He says things about fathers, and mudbloods, and infants, that Harry only half listens to because he's waiting to be told how to stop Tom from killing Ginny. Villains always say those sorts of things, and Tom Riddle is one. Only he looks more like Percy Weasley than like the Voldemort Harry remembers.

Harry has to look up to Tom, and he doesn't like that. "You should come with me," Tom says. "You've learned enough to be useful, and you won't get much more out of this place. You have power, Harry Potter. You could be great, if you try. Don't let ignorant fools like your Potions Master and Dumbledore control you."

_Yes_, Harry thinks, _but_. "Dumbledore doesn't control anyone," he says quietly. "Not like you do." They both know he's talking about Ginny, so he keeps staring at Tom and lets the venom enter his voice. "He's a more powerful wizard than you'll ever be. And if an infant could defeat you, Voldemort, what would a proper Slytherin want with you anyway!?" Riddle steps back, cold eyes still locked on Harry's, and says, "Come".

It's the basilisk that obeys. It slides out of Salazar's mouth, swollen with a thousand years of rats. If Fawkes hadn't blinded it, Harry wouldn't have had a chance, because he can't not look. Once he has looked, though, he runs away.

When Harry finally gets a breath, he unwinds the invisibility cloak. Harry wears it folded lengthwise and wound around his body from chest to waist. No-one's ever noticed the added bulk, and of course the cloak itself can't be seen at all. The basilisk can't see anything, though, because it's blind. _I'm a moron._ But he feels more secure, less conspicuous as he takes off again.

Ron Weasley's ahead and the basilisk is right behind, and who knows how he got back out here. It was hours ago he walked away, but it can't be because Ginny only has minutes. Weasley gets it stuck, but that leaves him still in the corridor with the flailing snake. He's moving a lot slower when he gets back to the Chamber.

Voldemort stands there with his hands in his pockets, telling Ginny Weasley horrible things that Harry hopes she can't hear. Harry walks in from the side, trying not to splash, and almost trips over the hat Fawkes dropped and the thing sticking out of it.

He bends carefully and pulls out a staff that's black and carved with a snake winding up to a skull. What's important is, it feels powerful. Useful. He lets go of the cloak and points it at Tom Riddle. "Leave her alone!" Riddle turns and stops, and smiles. "You're -"

"_Serpensortia!_" Harry cries, and then hisses a command. A cobra coils around Voldemort's solid-enough ankles and sinks its fangs in deep, encouraged by the promise of live rat. Tom yells in pain and tumbles headlong. The snake startles and bites harder before Tom's frantic kicking dislodges it. "Don't touch Ginny," Harry tells it quickly, as it retreats.

"_Cold_," the snake hisses in complaint, and takes itself into the shadows well away from Tom Riddle. Tom is wet, and unkempt, infuriated, and very much awake. Harry swings the staff just as he raises his wand, and it cracks very loudly against Riddle's head. Riddle drops again, the wand clattering out of his hand.

Cobra venom will kill, Harry knows, but it won't work fast enough to help Ginny. Tom fell only inches from the deep pool, so Harry hauls him just a little farther. Then Harry holds him down - a hand in his hair and one on his neck, and balancing his whole weight across Riddle's shoulders. The body tenses and strains, and then relaxes.

Harry holds on longer than he needs to, because he's waiting for Ginny to move so he knows it's alright. When she doesn't come over, or say anything, he looks back, and then stands up. Riddle doesn't move, and she doesn't move. She's posed like a doll, cradling the diary they'd both been fool enough to trust. She is very cold.

It's a long time before anyone comes in. Harry has time to retrieve his wand, and the Sorting Hat. He takes Tom Riddle's diary from Ginny and wraps it in his cloak. He wraps the cloak around his waist, picks up the staff, and walks away. When he hears voices outside, he pushes the stone portal wider and walks out of the Chamber.


	10. Harry Potter

It's a shock for Draco, to realize that Harry is going to be difficult. His father knows a lot of important people, and they all let themselves be managed and don't cause problems. So when they met properly on the train, he thought Harry Potter was going to be like that too.

But Harry's scar, it hurts, and he tries to hide it when he ought to enjoy the respect people give him for it. And he throws everything off, like at meals when he sits in Vin or Greg's place instead of his own, because he wants to be able to stare back.

Harry drags him out of bed for midnight Quidditch practices and spying missions that leave him bruised and dazed the day after: those weren't in the plan at all. Not to mention the troll, the forest, and everything else Harry's tricked him into.

Professor Snape tried to tell him from the beginning, but he said it in ways like 'bad influence' and 'unbecoming' that Draco couldn't be expected to pay attention to. Anyway, Harry is in his room, in his classes, and on his Quidditch team, and Draco can't help but trip over him.

He thought that he would be gracious, and Harry would be grateful, and there would be an understanding, the way Crabbe and Goyle know to follow him without anyone saying a word. But that hasn't happened, and now he understands that it isn't ever going to.

He sits on the hearth in the Slytherin common room at an unholy hour, watching Harry. Harry is kneeling in front of the fire, covered in filth and what might be blood. His hands tremble, but when he looked at Draco and said, "I'm going to kill Voldemort," his voice didn't shake at all.

Draco can't make himself speak, and truly doesn't want to know what happened, but he stays to keep watch. Harry rips blank pages out of a book and feeds them to the fire, one by one.


	11. Routine

Harry Potter sits down and picks up a cauldron.

"Potter." Snape acknowledges him with no more than the usual irritation, and then looks up suspiciously. "Potter, you do not have a detention today."

"I know." Harry keeps scrubbing.

"Then what are you doing?" Snape's expression has settled into a scowl, while he tries to determine just what the boy is up to now, and the response most likely to make him stop it.

"Scrubbing cauldrons. Sir." Talking back and forgetting to show even the barest semblance of respect. And Minerva said she'd have been glad to have Potter in her House.

"Don't you have something better to do, Potter?"

The boy stops, but only to examine his work. "No." Three successively more progressive Headmasters have squelched the less enlightened school traditions, but Snape sometimes yearns for the era when detentions were spent chained to a wall. He sets his teeth and returns to his grading, considering what alternate punishment he might mete out.

"Am I very much like my father?" Snape looks up, startled and profoundly irritated. He does look like James. James Potter in Slytherin's green, with the same recklessness, the same propensity for causing trouble - who had, this year, found more trouble than the golden boy had ever managed. Precisely why the boy feels the need to ask unwelcome questions, no doubt.

"Mr. Potter. Let me assure you that you are in very little danger of becoming the next Dark Lord. With your record of flagrant and incessant rule-breaking and unrelenting arrogance, I don't care for your chances of surviving the present one. The only improvement you have made over your father's school career thus far is in your choice of friends."

He pauses, hesitating at the memory of Dumbledore's displeasure as much as to savor the effect on the boy. "Or were you asking if your father had ever murdered anyone?"

He isn't disappointed: Potter startles, as if struck. His hands clench around the cauldron, tensed.

Snape sneers. "What did you think it was called, Potter, when you drown a person?"

Stammered denials of guilt, excuses, half-hearted apologies: Snape remembers these too well, and fully expects to see them again now. He isn't prepared for an answering sneer, "recent unfortunate events" pronounced with all the disgust it deserves.

"Albus Dumbledore," he mutters, recognizing the headmaster's generous euphemism. Reluctantly approving the boy's attitude, for the first time seeing in it more Slytherin than Potter.

The boy shifts uneasily, ready to recant. "I didn't mean - "

Snape cuts him off brusquely. "Better for you if you had, Potter. Don't waste your breath trying to justify it - you won't convince anyone by making excuses."

"I'm sorry, sir." There's an expression on Potter's face that Snape can't immediately place. When he does, he surges to his feet, crosses to the boy in three steps and snatches the dripping cauldron out of his hands. Replacing that look - was it really gratitude? - with a far more satisfactory surprise and alarm. "Get out of here, Potter. I've heard enough of your drivel for one year."


	12. Platform 9 34

Draco lingers in the train, amusing a handful of his hangers-on, picking up trinkets left behind in the excitement. Dobby - no, some other elf - will be collecting his luggage, and he doesn't want to seem too eager to go home. Much to his surprise, it's his father who waits for him on the platform.

Harry is going back to the Muggle world without a fight this time. The Weasleys had lost their daughter and the Malfoys were involved, so there were no other options. Harry hates his only relatives, the Dursleys, but has resolved that he can and _will_ tolerate what Voldemort apparently could not. He does not stay unduly long, does not hesitate to gather Hedwig and his trunk and leave the train.

Percy takes his duties as Prefect seriously, so he stumbles off the train with all the other Hogwarts students (excepting his three brothers and only sister). He's been keeping plenty busy with petty misbehavior and the expected end-of-term mischief. But it's so very good to see his family there, waiting for him at the end.

Ron turns away from the reunion long enough to find Potter, dragging trunk and owl and making a wide arc through the Purebloods to avoid them. They've all talked about how they can't blame Harry; but liking him isn't coming easy either. Still, Ron feels a twinge of sympathy when the Slytherin's slow progress stops dead at the hand of Lucius Malfoy.

Harry looks from the snake-headed cane against his chest to the cold-eyed wizard holding it. "Your book got a little destroyed," he says blandly. "And your master." No spell short of _Aveda Kedavra_ is going to keep him from Little Whinging, so there isn't much to be afraid of here. "But thanks for the Christmas present."

Lucius stares down at the Boy Who Lived, and finds little consolation for the ruin of a very promising attack. Whatever the impudent brat thinks he knows, he hasn't been sharing it with Draco and Draco hasn't been telling him - what an annoyingly useless friendship that's become. "My boy, you'll meet the same sticky end as your parents one of these days," he confides in a low and venomous voice. "They were meddlesome fools too." Then he straightens, to see his son finally arriving, careless and incurious as ever.

Draco approaches slowly, because discretion is a virtue, and often useful. To Harry, it only means "don't get caught," and a reminder about his graceless and dead parents isn't going to fix that no matter how intimidating Father tries to look. It's embarrassing, even though he's thrilled that Father came himself. Weasel's watching them too, and when Draco catches his eye, he mouths something he wouldn't dare say aloud. Draco smirks back, then he realizes he has his father's full attention, and Harry's gone entirely. "Sorry I'm late, Father," he says with a shrug.


End file.
